Puppy Therapy

Today was the first day we have gone to the Durham Bull’s game this season. The cold and rainy weather has not made baseball the first thing I want to do, despite my love of going to the game. I could care less about baseball on TV. For the most part I find it to be a slow and arduous thing to watch, but live and with friends at the ballpark I love it.

Today we filled our seats with my cousins Leigh and Sarah and their families and our friends Richard and Michelle. Carter also brought a friend. It was a full house in our seats, which helped keep me a little warmer in the cold wet weather.

This was the first time I had seen my cousins since their father passed away. We had so much to catch up on about the last weeks of his life and his funeral, which I missed since we were in Rome. Having a serious family talk between cheering for a good hit, or screaming about a bad call or giving kids money to go buy peanuts or discussing if it were better to eat a soft pretzel or cotton candy was almost surreal.

The one thing I learned that I was most happy to hear was how important my father was to my cousins through his brother’s whole illness and death. I just don’t think we always know if we are being helpful as family on the periphery, but hearing how much my cousins appreciated my father made my heart happy.

It was a double header today since yesterday’s game was rained out. We stayed for the first winning game, but then we needed to leave because we had driven Michelle and Richard and they had a new puppy we needed to spend time with. Hartley, the perfectly darling eight-week old little Jack Russell Terrier with the little white heart on her forehead was thrilled to see us and get to go out.

She is still such a tiny baby that she needs to snuggle to stay warm and nap every few minutes. I happily volunteered my cushy lap as the best place for her to do both. I think that holding a puppy is the best remedy for anything that is ailing you. It was great to spend time with my Cousins, but the sad reality that their father is gone really hit me today. Hartley was the perfect medicine for a sad heart.

Thanks to Michelle and Richard for being such kind hosts and letting us crash with Hartley and drink coffee and catch up. Too long between visits means we never really fully get through everything. Thanks for the puppy therapy. Now if we could just take them to the baseball game everything would be perfect.